Wednesday, cont'd

After leaving Abilene, we headed to Weatherford, where we picked up a car that one of my wonderful friends, Steph, let us borrow while we were in town. Then we went to have dinner with my 2 best friends from High School and their hubbies and sons.
Amanda and Holly and I have been friends for a LONG time now, and it has been so cool to see how the Lord has come into each of our lives and blessed us all with great husbands and families! I have met Ben and Dave, their hubbies many times before but had yet to meet their 2 little ones, Miles and Parker. And since we got there really close to Miles' bedtime (Amanda's lil one), I did NOT get a pic of him at all. But just take my work for it, he is PRECIOUS! But Parker, Holly's son, is apparently like his momma and likes to stay up late, so he stayed up late into the night with all of us, and lemme tell you, we hit it off! He is so much like both of his parents, and it was precious to see those characteristics in him.
Here are some pics...
Parker...i told u he was precious!

Us girls (now I'm the blonde one)...


Us with Parker...

And of course, my hubby had to get what he likes to call "an action shot"...

It was WONDERFUL catching up with them and meeting their boys! I'm so blessed to have such great friends that still make an effort to keep in touch even after 11 years (yikes that makes me feel old to say that)! :) And after our late night with them, we headed to our motel in Arlington to get some rest before the BIG GAME! Which you will hear about tomorrow! :) xoxo

Wednesday

The morning began with a lil work on the car (heehee)...

Then we left Lubbock and headed to Abilene to meet my friend Allison and David Connor, and their new, precious lil girl, Gentry! Now, it would be really nice to put a pic here of all 5 of us, but somehow we spent about an hour having lunch together and meeting Gentry, and we managed NOT to get a single picture! ARGH! But it was great to see the, and we had some great TX BBQ at Sharon Allen's, and then we headed to ACU to see the campus. I was so excited to show Chris where I went to college, and I was so excited for me because it's been a few years since I last visited ACU, and I have heard that they have made a ton of changes! So, we pull up to the new and amazing Welcome Center, get outta the car, and walk up to the door......only to find the silly thing locked. Later I learned that apparently now that I'm not in school anymore, they all of a sudden get the Wed before Thanksgiving OFF....yes, the WHOLE campus! ARGH! So anyways, it was still fun to introduce Chris to the campus from the outside of all the buildings and from peeking through a bunch of windows. Here are some pics...

View from Labyrinth and fountain of the front of the Welcome Center

The Labyrinth

The fountain

Jacob's Ladder sculpture

So, I KNOW I was suppose to do one day per post, BUT this has already been kinda long, and it IS Monday, so.....I'm going to do the rest of Wednesday tomorrow! Love you all!!!!

Until then....

Carlsbad Caverns

So, on Tuesday morning, we got up and headed out from Conchas, NM. And about lunchtime, we arrived at the caverns. The tour was a couple of hours long, and we started out by walking down into the caverns...

View from the bottom, when you can still see the light...

Us @ the entrance...

A warning sign (nice, huh?)...

God's sense of humor (can u see it? heehee)...

Called "lion's tail"...

"Whale's Mouth"...

Popcorn...

Bill, Patti & Chris...

We had a GREAT time at the caverns! They were so cool and so neat, and it's so fun to go to places like this and see amazing things that the Lord made. Of course, Chris, my adventurer husband, wants to go back and go spelunking and exploring alot more. BUT we all had a good time here, and it was a nice (and fairly inexpensive) detour.

After the caverns, we headed to Lubbock, TX for the night, before going on through Abilene and on to the metroplex, which you'll hear all about tomorrow! :)

Overwhelming

Sorry it's taken me soooo long to post anything about our trip. Honestly, it was a lil daunting at first to think about how long it was going to take to tell you about our trip and to show all of the pics. So, I think what I will do, and I stole this from Chels, is tell you about each day separately. That way, it's less daunting for me, AND you have the incredible joy of reading new posts everyday! :) heehee

So, we left for NM on Sun, 11/22 and drove to Chris' parents place...
While there, since it was too cold to take the boat out, for a lil bit of entertainment (besides playing Peaknuckle and driving the golf carts around

we went out and shot Bill's gun for a while...

(this is the guys looking at the piece of wood to see where in the world all their shots went-haha)

We stayed in Conchas for 2 nights, then headed to Carlsbad, NM on Tuesday morning (which you will hear about in tomorrow's post) :)

Vacation

So, today is one of two working days that I have left until I will be off for TEN WHOLE DAYS IN A ROW!!!!!! And let me tell you how very ready for a vacation I am! So, I was just going to let you all know that I will not be posting anything for prolly about 2 weeks! BUT in 2 weeks or so, I should, hopefully have a ton of pictures and stories to share with you about our trip.

I'm not sure if I've even mentioned this trip before (sorry, I am so bad about not re-reading my previous posts before posting a new one). So, here's the plan....this Sunday we will leave with Chris' parents to go down to their property in NM for 2 nights. Then, on Tues morn, we'll get up, drive to the Carlsbad Caverns and spend a few hours and then drive to Lubbock to stay the night. Wed, we will go thru Abilene (which I'm esp excited about cuz Chris will get to see where I went to school, and I'll get to see the tons of changes they've made on campus since I last was there a few years ago) and then head east. We're staying right across the Interstate from the new Cowboys Stadium on Wed and Thurs nights and going to the Raider/Cowboy game on Thanksgiving Day (which has been a dream of mine for years now)! Then the in-laws will start their drive back to CO on Fri morn while we stay behind in TX to visit with friends and family. On Fri, we'll be touring the stadium with my older sis and her fam (who I haven't seen in over a year!!!!) and then we're spending some time with dad's side of the fam. I'll be meeting up with at least 2 of my other friends over the weekend, and then we'll be flying back on Monday morn.

I can't tell you how excited I am about this trip AND how the Lord has worked so many blessings into this trip already. As you know, we are VERY LOW on money right now so a vacation seems quite ridiculous! However, we are blessed that Chris' parents are driving and paying for all of the motels along the way; we have a friend that is loaning us her car for when we get to DFW; we're having a free meal with my best friends from HS on Wed night; we're staying with some wonderful friends of ours in Joshua who are GRACIOUS and wonderful hosts; and my dad paid for the tickets for us to fly back so we'd have some extra time with the fam! Isn't it wonderful how He provides, even for a time of relaxation and to be with friends and family???? Thank you, Father!!!!

So, hopefully, I'll have tons of posts and pics coming your way in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, please pray for our safe travel.

Have a BLESSED Thanksgiving holiday! We love and appreciate each one of you!!!!

Weekend

We had a GREAT weekend of waking up without an alarm clock and just relaxing and hanging with friends. Plus it was topped off by a very nice performance by my Cowboys, who are now in sole possession of first place in their division-woooohooooo! :)
We did spend the big bucks to go see The Stepfather at the $2 theater on Sat. It was decent, and honestly it was just so nice to actually get out and spend a tiny bit of money! Course we watched football all weekend and got together with our wonderful small group last night.
This week Chris has a hockey game, and we're hoping to go climbing at our gym that we do not take advantage of enough. And I get to play BUNCO with the girls on Friday night-so fun! Besides that personal stuff, Chris has a couple "meetings" for work stuff and will be sitting down with his mom this week to possibly start working with her in her "moving freight biz" to make some extra cash. That's in italics cuz I still have no idea what EXACTLY it is that she does! :)
Oh and one final and very exciting thing to blog about.....Lord-willing, on Thursday, we will have a full condo of ALL NEW CARPET! It seems as though our fiasco with our silly mgmt/hoa ppl has finally come to an end-whew! Seriously, it seems so silly to think that the Lord would care about something so trivial as carpet, but I have NO DOUBT that this is His doing and an answered prayer straight from Him. Thank you, father for caring about even the little, seemingly silly things in our lives!
I will end with a hilarious pic of our baby girl, posing for the camera!!!! :)
Love you all very much! Have a blessed week!

Where did 17 whole days go?

Sorry for not having posted anything in 2.5 weeks! Goodness, I have no idea where that time went! :) Course not too much is going on with us that's new, so there hasn't been a whole lot to update you on. CO had a huge snow storm that began on Tues night and finally ended yesterday, and I have a couple pics of the post-storm piles at the end of this. Getting to and from work on Wed was a lil scary and tricky, so I took a Snow Day on Thursday and stayed home with the hubby. Who, btw, is getting sick. Luckily, he doesn't have a fever or other flu symptoms at the moment, so hopefully he just has a sinus/cold thing going on.
Last weekend, we did go to a Middle School hangout time with the youth group from our church. It was a blast! Chris also had his last football game (that he videos) last weekend, so this weekend, we're looking forward to not doing much, for once!
Hope you all have a good one! Love you! Here are the pics I took on my way to the garage this morning...